


Perhaps, Just A Touch Of Exhibitionism

by Dracarysforged



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Domestic Fluff, First Kiss, John "Three Continents" Watson, John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes, M/M, Oral Fixation, Pre-Relationship, Sheet!Lock, Sherlock Wearing A Sheet, Sherlock wears high thread counts or he wears nothing at all, including his sheets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:54:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24210160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracarysforged/pseuds/Dracarysforged
Summary: Queen and Country wasn’t entirely prepared for Sherlock Holmes in nothing but a bedsheet, but John Watson certainly was.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 79





	Perhaps, Just A Touch Of Exhibitionism

**Author's Note:**

> Errors are my own, not brit-picked  
> THANK YOU for reading and enjoy!

The case last night hadn’t wrapped up until just before sunrise after 3 grueling days of stakeouts and foot chases, both of them stumbling into a flat lit only by pink-tinged dawn light. John had slept most of the morning and into the afternoon, still in his jeans, reliving the whole ordeal in a haze of blurred fever dreams. Indeed, he’s not even sure he fully remembers how he got into bed, half feeling like he was dreaming from the moment his adrenaline dropped during the cab ride home. 

John has a vague memory of bashing his shins on the stairs, Sherlock’s deep voice too close to his ear, an iron bar across his chest, dragging him. Sherlock must have gone to bed at some point, because he’s not on the sofa, the floor, his chair, or in the bathtub when John finally stumbles down from his room, stomach growling. 

Tragically, they’ve nothing in but some molding cheese and a white butcher paper package John doesn’t have the courage to open. 

Desperate times call for desperate measures and despite the fact that he probably looks like one of Sherlock’s homeless network, he goes to check if Mrs. Hudson has some coffee cake left. He could smell it last night and she usually brings thems some anyway but, disappointingly, there is no answer at her door. 

John has single-mindedly marched halfway to a brekkie sandwich and coffee from a pot that Sherlock isn’t growing algae in, when he realizes his phone isn’t in his pocket. He waffles on the sidewalk for a moment, wondering if the hunger or the anxiety will win out. 

Sherlock is...peculiar, about him having his phone on him. John might call it worry in anyone else, but with Sherlock it usually bubbles quickly over into frustrated and exasperated, the wires of his emotions all crossed and tangled like earbuds in a pocket.

Before John has consciously made a decision, he’s already turned and headed back, figuring he can get his phone and Sherlock’s breakfast order all in one go and feel marginally less like he wasted a trip. He’s so lost in the daydream of his sandwich and piecing together the rush of the last 3 days that his feet carry him halfway into the flat before he even realizes he’s back.

A flash of white catches his eye and he freezes, momentarily panicked at not remembering the trip home. 

Panic which quickly evolves when his head snaps around and he realizes the flash of white is the crisp color of Sherlock’s bedsheet. Said bedsheet is currently wrapped around Sherlock’s lower half, barely, held carefully in place as Sherlock is frozen in the kitchen doorway, the mug of tea in his other hand halfway to his mouth. He is unbelievably naked, all ten miles of him, one leg bared clear to the hip and the sheet nothing more than a precarious flutter, making him look like a classical marble statue.

Sherlock regains composure first, suddenly straightening, a cool look on his face like he’s daring John to mention anything is out of the ordinary.

 _Go on John,_ his eyes seem to say, _deduce the obvious._

John closes his mouth with a click, turning on his heel to ascend the stairs to his bedroom, grab his phone, and flee the flat without so much as a word or second look. 

He has to stop on the street corner and laugh so hard it makes him cough and several concerned passersby ask him if he is okay.

While waiting in line at the shop he gets a text:

 _Eggs, sausage, no cheese. The sourdough, toasted. Their ciabatta is a joke._ _SH_

And he loses it all over again. 

*******

The next time it happens, Sherlock is just coming off a fever, one of the worst experiences of John’s natural life. Sherlock ill is nightmarish -- full of passionate, utterly incoherent monologues, stumbling around the flat, copious amounts of bathwater on the floor, and endless, wordless groans sunk into the leather of the couch. To make matters worse, the thick summer heat has held on through late October, so the flat is hot and stifling with little in the way of a breeze except a single floor fan and throwing the windows open wide with hope.

Turns out Sherlock carries only a fractionally deeper understanding of long-term climate change than he does heliocentrism, daily weather being more useful for deductions. Not enough people murdering each other in London over global warming, John supposes; but if the heat hangs on much longer, the first victim might be Sherlock himself. 

John is brushing his teeth in the bathroom and debating the merits of sticking his head under the tap when he hears Sherlock stumbling from his room and down the hall, clipping every available surface on the way by the sound of it. John peeks out just as Sherlock turns the corner into the sitting room, catching a flash of cream which nearly makes him drop his toothbrush. 

He peeks around the kitchen door and, sure enough, Sherlock is sprawled across the couch. His face is turned into the cushions, wrapped in nothing but a bed sheet that is also pulled up over his face, his long, bare legs poking out one end and his hair poking out the other.

“Fan,” he snaps from his cocoon and John jumps. 

“Uh, what?”

Sherlock lifts his head from the depths of his sheet to deliver John with a particularly ugly look and John’s brain catches up. 

“Oh, yeah, yeah.” 

John grabs the standing fan from the kitchen, usually reserved for airing out Sherlock’s experiments or the fridge, and plugs it in so that it is pointed at Sherlock curled up on the couch. 

The air rustles Sherlock’s curls each time it oscillates past but Sherlock doesn’t say another word. John can’t see his face from this angle, but Sherlock’s tight shoulders start to slide loose, his breathing going deep and even. 

Something tight in John’s chest loosens in answer. Sherlock struggles to control his wild energy swings at the best of times, but the lack of consistent rest was starting to become a self-sabotaging circle. John had tried every way he could invent to get Sherlock’s temperature down and was just starting to wonder if he’d have to call Mycroft or Molly to get some tests done and scripts filled when the fever finally broke on it’s own. 

He’s exhausted, but he knows he won’t be able to sleep in this oppressive heat, nightmares of hot sand and hotter sun inevitably waiting for him. Instead, he picks up his laptop and tries to decide where the coolest place in the flat might be. 

John wants to sit in the path of the fan but isn’t willing to drag a chair and wake Sherlock. He hesitates only a moment and then walks carefully across the room, dropping a pillow beneath him as he sinks to the floor in front of the couch, setting his laptop on the coffee table in front of him. He can just hear Sherlock’s stuffy-nosed snore wheezing into the couch cushions over his shoulder and the fan is a comforting breeze over both of them. John immediately feels better. 

The flat sinks into syrupy late afternoon sunlight as John works and Sherlock dozes, the thick heat cresting. John isn’t sure how much time has passed when Sherlock finally shifts, groaning into the pillow. 

John sits back from his laptop, wondering if he should get up and grab Sherlock a cold pack and water, but light fingers on his shoulder stop him in his tracks. Sherlock comes in so close that John can feel his breath ghosting over the side of his face, a shadow on the edge of John’s peripheral vision, and rests his chin on John’s shoulder. 

John can barely breathe for fear of breaking the soft, intimate moment; Sherlock curled around him and humming thoughtfully as he reads John’s computer screen over his shoulder. 

John had been writing a rambling blog post to fill the time, joking about the heat and explaining their absence from crime solving due to Sherlock’s illness. John had been idly wondering who Sherlock tormented with his illnesses before John had come along and the subsequent comments on his blog prove just what John suspected, which is basically that Sherlock keeps working until he collapses and either Lestrade or Molly force him into Mrs. Hudson’s care. 

_Pour a Lucozade down his throat for me will you? He hates the stuff_! Greg offers. 

Molly’s starts with a heart emoji. _He likes ice lollies, even if he’ll never tell you. There were some raspberry ones in the freeze, under the cold packs, last I looked. Thank you for looking after him! Tell him to be nice!_

Sarah has commented, _good thing you’re probably immune to all that after that bout of colds last month. I swear no one teaches children to cover their mouths. Good luck!_

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock whispers into the skin of his temple. John turns in surprise, Sherlock’s mouth dragging across his cheekbone before they both pull back.

John is staring at Sherlock’s eyes, but Sherlock’s gaze is zeroed in on John’s mouth, his eyes the perfect silver teal of olive leaves glinting in the sun. Barely a handbreadth away and Sherlock still somehow looks lonely. 

It takes John a moment to realize Sherlock is speaking again. 

“-- this insufferable heat. Impossible to focus on anything of value, my head feels like daytime telly.” 

Sherlock is rubbing at his temples, face creasing and smoothing in turns, trying to soothe the violence inside his skull. 

John turns on the floor and reaches out on instinct, brushing Sherlock’s fingers aside with his own, and for a moment they both freeze. Sherlock’s face is a broken mask, lost and longing peeking through, his hands brushing over the back of John’s. A tentative, unspoken question to the touch. 

There is a fine line between self-awareness and self-hatred and Sherlock’s always meanered back and forth over it. While John may wish now and again that Sherlock employed a fraction of his brain to attempting to be a marginally more thoughtful human, all in all he wouldn’t change one molecule of Sherlock Holmes. If quicksilver eyes and that secret crooked smile costs him toes in the crisper drawer, any pain he’s ever endured, and whatever madcap chase Sherlock will send them on next, then John would gladly pay an eternity over. 

The thought of Sherlock feeling anything less than utterly wanted, even when he's listless and stuffy-nosed and frustrated, is suddenly viscerally abhorrent to John. 

There is no beginning or end to the kiss, it suddenly just is like it was there all along, the quiet snap of the last tumblr in a lock giving way. Sherlock’s mouth is chapped and bitten, a hint of copper taste between them. The angle is a little off, wet and sliding, and John doesn’t give one bloody fuck, pouring himself into kissing away all the logic and efficiency of Sherlock’s mind. Sherlock’s usually crisp moves, _testing_ , _learning, returning_ , slipping into something curious and soft under his hands. 

When John finally pulls back for air, his chest is heaving, Sherlock is blushed red as a tomato, his breath raspy and shallow in answer.

“We-we need to talk about this.” John stutters out, feeling betrayed by his own mouth. Talking is the last thing he feels like doing. 

Sherlock sighs, gingerly setting his head back down on the couch cushions, wheezing pathetically. 

“Do we really?” he says, but without any of his usual snark. A bit tired, a bit recovering from illness, a bit of something delightful dancing across his face. His eyes are glassy but crinkled at the corners, giving him away. 

“Maybe later,” John concedes, resting his head on the cushion next to Sherlock’s. 

John stares and stares, watching the sunset light play over Sherlock’s face, the fan still playfully rustling his hair on each pass. Sherlock, in keeping with John’s estimate of his perfection, doesn’t fidget or quail under the scrutiny; instead, he lets his eyes slide closed, breathing carefully through his mouth and allowing John to look his fill. The blush recedes from his face slowly, his illness and recovery leaving him even paler and thinner than usual, and still John can’t stop looking. When Sherlock finally opens his eyes again, they are soft and dark and a little tired, lit with promise and anticipation. 

“Ice lolly?” John asks with a grin suddenly wildly out of his control. 

Sherlock rolls his eyes, smothering his smile into the couch cushions. 

“Yes.” he mumbles and John doesn’t regret planting a loud, wet kiss on the shell of Sherlock’s ear or the swat he narrowly dodges after.

He laughs all the way to the freezer and gets two. 

*******

_Always comes in threes, doesn’t it?_

The third time it happens, there is no excusing, no reasoning it away. Sherlock is sober and John is sober and no one is sick and Sherlock didn’t have to fumigate his room and the flat isn’t on fire and no hazardous chemicals have been spilled. 

They kiss now, over teacups passed hand to hand and John’s laptop and sometimes breathless in alleys, but no more. John is deeply, lazily happy, no desire to push Sherlock or worry about the future. Sometimes he sees something there, Sherlock watching him hawkishly at crime scenes and over takeaway, but John is content to let him make the next move. 

This day in particular is the most utterly normal kind of Sunday, in a way 221B hasn’t seen in a long time. John has a cup of tea and the paper, nowhere to be and no one to put on more than ratty jeans and slippers for. The windows are open to invite a breeze, damp heat shimmering ahead of dark, rumbling thunderclouds on the horizon. When the first gust of cool air breaks on the edge of the storm, it tugs playfully at papers and the curtains as it sweeps the flat, making John shiver. 

Sherlock strolls casually out of his room, holding a light grey sheet wrapped messily around him, the rest trailing down and out like he’s in an ancient painting, a muse draped in linen. He has three mugs balanced precariously in the other hand, probably full of mold. He glides across the room and dumps them into the sink with a clatter that makes John jump.

“Oi!” 

John looks over his shoulder with what he hopes is a suitably pointed glare but Sherlock only shrugs, swanning back through the flat and curling into his chair in one seamless move, sheet endlessly tangled and draped around him. Hints of him are exposed between the lines of the soft fabric: the toes of one foot, curled up to the top of his thigh, one pale shoulder sharp and bare, the long fingers of one hand. 

Sherlock re-adjusts in his chair so that his legs are laying over one arm and his head is tilted back over the other, the sheet nearly baring the entire right side of his body, only saved by a quick reflexive grab. 

John chokes on his tea. 

Sherlock ignores him, his hands coming up under his chin, his eye falling shut. 

Silence sinks around them. 

Eventually, Sherlock breaks, sighing loudly. 

“Shut up. You’re thinking too loud.”

"You can’t read my mind, Sherlock.”

“You keep shifting, one of the springs in your chair is squeaky.”

John looks down and bounces a little in the chair, “I don’t hear anything.”

“You served in an active war zone and got shot in the shoulder. 25% overall hearing loss in the left ear and 20% for high pitches in both ears. Your peripheral vision on the left has improved to compensate, so you are rarely startled.”

John waits exactly five full seconds and then rapidly bounces up and down on the apparent squeaky spring with as much gleeful energy as he can muster. 

“JOHN!” Sherlock roars, sitting up and briefly losing his grip on his sheet again, flushed all down his bare neck and chest. 

“The sheet is a nice look for you, Sherlock,” John says, falling still. “You know, you can wear your pants around the flat if you like, I don’t care. Mrs. Hudson might but, then again, she might enjoy it.”

“It’s hot in my room and we aren’t going anywhere and Mrs. Hudson is out this morning.” Sherlock snaps. 

“Oh so the problem is that you don’t want to wear pants at all?” John asks, barely managing to contain his smile. “No need to get defensive, Sherlock, I’m not going to tell you no.”

He tries for innocence but somehow the comment veers into wickedness and even Sherlock is looking at him out of the corner of his eye with a shadow of surprise. 

John carefully lifts the newspaper until it covers his blushing face, effectively blocking the vision of Sherlock’s disheveled grace behind paper and print. 

A silence continues to ooze in that honeyed way, sweet and sticky. John feels like the temperature is rising by the second. 

“Are you actually reading?” Sherlock finally says. 

“Yes.” John snaps, without looking up. He hasn’t turned a page this entire time.

Sherlock moves like a bloody cat when he wants too which is how he somehow manages to get out of his chair and wrap his long fingers over the top of John’s paper without a sound, startling John terribly when he pushes it down out of the way. 

The kiss is a lightning strike, Sherlock barely holding on to his sheet with one hand and crushing John’s paper between them with the other, one leg slid into John’s chair and against his hip to get closer. John’s hands, still clutched on the ruined paper, brush against the skin of Sherlock’s stomach, feeling the sharp draw of breath each time they connect. 

Just as a lightning strike, Sherlock pulls back quickly, leaving John chasing after his mouth. 

“Uh…” is all John can seem to manage. 

Sherlock is looming over him, looking expectant, and suddenly turns on his heel and walks away.

“Sherlock!” John calls, scrambling out of his chair, nearly dumping his entire side table, cup of tea and all, on the floor in his haste. 

Sherlock stops in the archway of the kitchen door and looks back. “What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“John, I feel like I’m making myself exceedingly clear here.”

“Actually, no, you aren’t. That would involve you using actual words, aloud, outside of your own brain.”

“Very well,” Sherlock says, turning to him fully. “John Watson, either you get over here in the next minute and have sex with me or I will parade around this flat entirely naked.”

John makes an embarrassing noise when he chokes on his own spit and Sherlock mutters, “Yes, that’s attractive.” John determines through the coughing and the tears in his eyes that Sherlock is trying to kill him. 

“Sherlock, what-?”

“43 seconds, John. Then I’m dropping this sheet and I’ll go ask to borrow sugar from the neighbor.” Sherlock gestures wildly, sheet swirling around his legs. 

“Calm down,” John manages to say, half breathless and half laughing, too amused and delighted to think clearly about the fear and uncertainty tangled at the bottom of this particular barrel of monkeys. 

“10 seconds, John.”

There is a brief, uncertain moment of stillness and then John lunges at precisely the same moment Sherlock opens the hand holding the sheet. 

John slams into Sherlock, who only just manages to keep his footing, rocking back on his heels, while John pins the sheet precariously to Sherlock’s hip with both hands. It takes a moment for John to fully understand the predicament he’s in. 

The lunge has left him zeroed in on Sherlock’s hip, crouched slightly so that his head is just the height of Sherlock’s chest and his hands space the plane of Sherlock’s lower stomach, up over his hip bone, and into the expanse of soft thigh. 

John turns his head just slightly to look up and is surprised to find Sherlock staring down at him, eyes wide. As the standoff holds, Sherlocks features fall and reshape into a hungry look, his eyes going dark and keen. 

“Good catch,” Sherlock says between then, with just the same tone as that first night in the parking lot, pride and a hint of something else. 

_Good shot._

His breath blows over John’s face, smelling of coffee, radiating triumph in every line of his body. John feels like he’s holding a loaded gun, warm and familiar and dangerous and so, _so_ comfortable under his hands. 

Sherlock shifts. _Safety’s off_

John stands up and digs his fingers in a little, jerking Sherlock towards him so that just as Sherlock sucks in a startled breath, hands coming up to brace on John’s shoulders, John’s mouth meets his. 

John has a bruising handful of sheet and Sherlock’s skin over one hip, and Sherlock’s jaw in the other, manhandling him up against the kitchen table as it shrieks across the floor. John sends up a silent prayer of thanks that Mrs. Hudson is out because volume is the least of his concerns right now. 

Sherlock sweeps the table with an arm, sending a number of delicate glass microscope slides shattering on the floor, and hauls himself to sit on it. John pulls back, but doesn’t loosen his grip, and looks over the side of the table at the glass. 

“Anything that might kill us?” he asks, relatively unconcerned. Something dark and pleased stirs in John at the thought that this, being in John's arms and kissing him again and again and _again_ , is more important than whatever he had on those slides. 

Sherlock looks over his shoulder at the shattered remains for a moment and then shakes his head, “no, the biggest danger is the glass.”

“Then we’ll worry about it later.” John says, stepping neatly between Sherlock's legs and hauling him in for another bruising kiss. 

It’s obvious Sherlock has experience, a thought John can’t dwell too closely on right now, but he responds with such breathless delight to every little touch that John is momentarily furious at every person who has ever touched Sherlock before and not made him feel this way each and every time. It only lasts a moment though, before the smug pleasure that he’s the only one to tempt these writhing sounds from Sherlock Holmes bleeds through. 

John digs his thumbs in and runs them along the top edge of Sherlock’s hip bones, swallowing the taller man’s answering gasp. Kissing has degraded to panting into each other’s mouths, John’s brain trying to decide how to move next and overwhelmed by all the options. 

John transfers his tight grip to Sherlock’s thighs, thumbs running just along the inside and testing the edges of the draped sheet, making Sherlock duck his head to muffle his sounds into the shadows of John’s shoulder. 

Sherlock drags his tongue up the column of John’s neck, sliding his teeth and tongue along stubble before he bites down on the line of John’s jaw, drawing out a startled moan. John’s hands flex against the muscle of his thighs, making Sherlock bite harder, a feedback loop of pleasure. 

John pushes closer, sliding his fingers higher to frame where their hard lengths are pressed side by side through so little fabric, their sharp inhale almost simultaneous. Glass tinkles under his slippered feet but the view of the floor is interrupted by the sight of Sherlock’s cock, indecently outlined through that thin bedsheet, a sheer patch of pre-cum already spreading from the head. The denim length of John is pressed in tight next to him, a little shorter but leaning toward girth, testing the sharp edges of his zipper. 

“Fuck, Sherlock,” John says quietly, running a thumb over the length of them together. 

Sherlock’s head falls back, his adam's apple bobbing knife sharp under the skin of his neck as he swallows, “John!” 

John waits patiently until Sherlock’s head rolls back around to look at him, looking cross that John has stopped moving. John is leaning deeply into Sherlock, one hand pressing into the tabletop next to Sherlock’s hip and one arm wrapped around Sherlock’s back tightly, pulling him impossibly closer. He finds he has no ability to control the no doubt shit-eating grin he can feel pulling at his face but it’s worth it when Sherlock smiles tentatively back, running curious fingers over John’s shoulders and arms. 

John kisses him soundly, a wet, sloppy, joyful thing, and pats his hip.

“Legs around me, I’ll carry you to the hall.”

Sherlock looks John dubiously up and down, “I’m significantly taller than you.” 

“And a stone lighter. Don’t worry, I carry all my muscle in my thighs.” John says with what he hopes is a suggestive wiggle of his eyes brows. “I can’t believe you haven’t noticed.”

Sherlock looks concerned. 

“A joke?” he finally asks.

“An innuendo, “John laughs, “come on, trust me. It’s just a few steps, I promise I won’t throw you on your bed and ravish you like a heroine in a bad romance novel. I’ll put you down in the hall.” 

Sherlock still looks a little dubious but something in his eyes glints like a challenge, like he needs to witness for himself this strength in John. 

“Legs up,” John says, tapping his thigh as he wraps them around John’s hips. “Arms now,” John adds, and Sherlock’s arms snake around his neck, tucking his face into the soft skin behind John’s ear. 

John flexes and lifts him easily, reveling in Sherlock safe and whole and trusting in his arms. Sherlock entertains himself by licking at the delicate curves of John’s ear and John has to focus extra hard on avoiding the worst of the glass and not dropping Sherlock. 

As soon as they are free of the kitchen and related hazards, John turns sharply, earning an exclamation from Sherlock that quickly turns filthy as John presses him tight to the wall, sheet tangled round and round John’s arms and Sherlock’s thighs and essentially failing at its job in the first place. 

John pins Sherlock to the wall with hips and one arm tight under his arse and uses the other to drift fingers at the edges of fine, dark hair stretching down Sherlock’s stomach and beneath the sheet, his fingers just brushing the velvety soft head of Sherlock’s cock. 

Sherlock’s head thumps back into the wall, his hands sliding up John’s neck and into his hair, fingers tight and questing. 

John sets himself to exploring the entire geography of Sherlock’s neck and the landscape of his collarbones, hand pressed wide over Sherlock’s lower stomach, carefully noting each sound and squirm and gasp he is rewarded with through touch and sound. He’s not sure how long has passed when Sherlock tugs on his hair impatiently. 

“Bed,” he says, voice rough. 

John pulls back, wondering if he looks as wicked as he feels, and thinks probably yes if the wondering, hungry look on Sherlock’s face is anything to go by. 

He sets Sherlock down gently and the sheet slides to the floor between them. Before John can look his fill, Sherlock has shoved him roughly to the opposite wall, dropping to his knees on the hall rug and pressing his face to the bulge in John’s jeans like an overly friendly housecat. 

“Christ,” John chokes out, reaching for Sherlock’s shoulders, feeling unsteady. 

Sherlock runs his hands up the back of John’s legs, fingers dancing along the top edge of his thighs, and John can’t control the mumbled swearing pouring from his mouth. 

Sherlock’s hot breath is creating a damp patch in John’s jeans that feels like torture and tease all at once. He makes the mistake of looking down just as Sherlock tilts his gaze up, his mouth and cheek pressed to the shadow of John’s straining erection and looking utterly pleased with himself. 

“Oh fuck,” John distantly hears himself say, before his bad knee buckles. 

Sherlock surges into him, pinning him to the wall and keeping him from crumpling to the floor. John manages to get his legs under him, but it takes longer than it should due to Sherlock’s plundering kiss, wet and hot and full of teeth and impatience. 

“All right, all right,” John mutters between them, biting at Sherlock’s mouth in answer. 

The next moments are a blur of pulling and pushing. Sherlock gets his bedroom door open but John pushes it closed; toeing his shoes off and stalking Sherlock against the bed until his knees bend and he’s suddenly looking up at John. The room is dim, lit only by the remnants of afternoon sunlight dispersed through the oncoming stormclouds, making the rumpled grey linens of the bed shimmer, casting Sherlock in a halo.

John steps between his spread knees and runs his thumbs reverently over Sherlock’s cheekbones, relishing in how Sherlock’s eyes fall closed, basking in the sensation. The whole magnificent mind of him, cradled in John’s rough hands and Sherlock looks...content. Peaceful. Things John would have paid anything to bring to Sherlock’s life, and now here he is, finding it as simple as reaching out to touch. 

Sherlock plucks at John’s shirt, making efficient work of the buttons. He shoves at it impatiently, letting John shake it off his arms, and instead dedicates himself to dragging his mouth over the soft skin of John’s belly. 

John focuses on not being self-conscious, not sucking in ridiculously. He’ll never be thin like Sherlock is thin, and there are still abs there from army days and chasing Sherlock around since; they’ve just tucked back into the softer edges of a body that enjoys life once more, a feat he’s genuinely proud of. 

Sherlock too, seems to be pleased, if the ticklish humming into John’s skin is any indicator. He runs his slender hands around John’s hips and up his back to span his shoulder blades, each individual finger pressing in tightly.

John ducks between his arms to kneel at the bedside, hissing when Sherlock’s nails turn and drag up over his shoulders at the movement. John presses his mouth to Sherlock’s wrist, dragging lips, teeth, and tongue along the tender inside of his arm. 

Sherlock is muttering his name over and over, petting John’s hair mindlessly, his body curled over John tucked between his legs. John takes his time, mapping the labyrinth of Sherlock’s veins up his arm and down his chest. For a moment, John pauses just over Sherlock’s heart, tongue hot against the skin there before he lunges, pressing his teeth tightly into Sherlock’s pale skin, releasing it again to lick at the coming bruise. 

Sherlock moans indecently, his fingers twisting tightly in John’s hair, and John surges up to taste it with his own mouth. John can feel his hands tremble on Sherlock’s thighs, his mind spinning with possibilities. 

“John,” Sherlock says into the skin of his temple, both of them reduced to simply hanging on to each other like survivors in a storm. 

John hums in reply, beyond words, idly stretching to run his teeth over the shell of Sherlock’s ear. Sherlock swears under his breath, his hips rocking up and pressing his silky cock along the length of John’s stomach. 

“John,” Sherlock says again, tugging on his arms a little bit. “Come here.” 

John crawls up his body, shoving him back and truly embraces the meaning of the phrase 'snogged senseless'. When he pulls back, Sherlock looks dazed and stunned, his hair a wild nest and his cheeks flushed. 

Sherlock just manages to level himself up to his elbows, though it takes him a long, uncoordinated moment, John sitting back on his thighs to allow him a little room. Sherlock would almost look cross if he didn’t also look so utterly blissed out. 

“Move, it’s my turn.” Sherlock says, shoving at John’s hip. 

“Wait you tur-” John starts to say and trails off incoherently when Sherlock dips his fingers beneath his waistband to brush the head of his cock, watching John like he’s a bubbling experiment. 

“Sherlock, fuck,” John says, head falling. 

“You first, I don’t want to be distracted.” Sherlock leans up to whisper, dragging teeth over John’s ear and making his hips jerk in Sherlock’s lap. 

“Up, up.” Sherlock growls, shoving at him. John stumbles back off the bed, laughing when Sherlock drops to his knees, aggressively reaching for John’s pants and nearly sending them both to the floor. John has to grab Sherlock by the shoulders and Sherlock has him by the belt loops and they both stare for a moment until balance returns to the world.

Sherlock’s eyes are otherworldly silver in the dim light, watching him intently for a moment and then darting away. John feels like he’s never going to stop smiling, running a thumb over the shell of Sherlock’s ear as he watches Sherlock determinedly wrestle with button and zip. 

But, Sherlock is still Sherlock and nothing keeps him from his goal for long. He shoves John’s trousers and pants to his knees, John’s cock already hard enough to stand proudly between them on its own. Sherlock skims his lips just along the edge, making John’s fingers sink into his hair as he bites back a groan. 

Sherlock buries his nose in the thatch of brown curls at the base of John’s cock, breathing deeply. His hands are questing up the back of John’s thighs, pressing and scratching lightly in turns across every secret, soft place on John’s body. 

“We’re going to talk about how good you are at this later,” John stutters out. 

“Don’t be ridiculous John,” Sherlock mutters into the tender skin across the plane of John’s hip, making him jerk, “I haven’t done anything yet. You hardly know how good I am at anything.”

“Christ,” John says again, feeling like he’ll never stop. 

“Sit on the bed,” Sherlock says, shoving at him, following barely a breath behind.

John collapses onto the edge of the bed and Sherlock strips him of the last of his clothes aggressively, sinking to his knees between John’s legs to mirror their position from earlier. 

Sherlock’s hands dance over John’s kneecaps, slightly ticklish, and then up and up and up. Without warning, Sherlock digs his fingers into John’s thighs viciously and swallows John down all in one move. John would be bucking up off the bed if Sherlock weren’t holding him down in a crushing grip and as it is he jerks sharply anyway, curling over Sherlock’s bobbing head. 

Sherlock works him hard and fast and surprisingly messy. If John’s head weren’t already spinning he would wonder at how someone can be so fastidious and so utterly unselfconscious all in the same heartbeat.

John shifts minutely, relishing the bruishing dig of Sherlock’s fingers into the tender inside of his thighs. Sherlock can’t take him deep, practice of a sort John looks forward to teaching him by demonstration; but, he makes up for it in enthusiasm. He pulls back, sucking in greedy lungfuls of air, strings of saliva stretching between them.

It’s the best thing John’s ever seen.

Sherlock looks wicked, there’s no other word for it. His curls are all pulled loose of whatever product he uses, soft and disorderly. He watches John carefully through hooded eyes, his face catching passing light from outside in slow snatches, striking across the glisten of his mouth and chin. 

Sherlock doesn’t break eye contact as he slides his mouth over John’s length again, humming slightly and sending John bucking in his grip again. John touches his thumb reverently to the edge of Sherlock’s stretched lips, sliding it forward as he slides back out until there is room for him to run the pad of his thumb along Sherlock’s teeth, catching a bit of that tongue. He digs his fingers in a little under the line of Sherlock’s jaw, feeling the other man swallow sharply and sending rippling shudders through them both. 

John floats for a bit, let’s himself sink into the bliss of it. He drifts, daydreaming of the taste of Sherlock in his mouth, the flashbang sensation each time Sherlock’s sinks down around him, the breathless punched out sounds they are both making. 

Before he knows it...

“Sherlock, I’m gonna-”

Sherlock pulls off with a pop and works John’s length with every centimeter of those musician’s fingers.

“Come on John.” Sherlock says, just the same deep, delighted tone he uses when he’s enticing John on some dangerous new adventure and they meet in the middle for a bruising kiss, Sherlock’s name half caught in John’s mouth. 

John comes so hard he thinks he might black out for a second and blinks back to awareness with his forehead pressed to Sherlock’s, both of them breathing like they've chased a suspect halfway across London. 

John realizes with a furious blush that he’s come so hard he’s painted Sherlock from chest to jaw line, obscene and shining in the dark, but Sherlock doesn’t seem to care and John bloody loves it. 

“Fuck, oh fuck come here,” John orders, pulling and pushing Sherlock’s until he’s spread luxiously on his back across his own bed, licking at his swollen mouth and looking at John like the cat who got the canary. 

John decides it’s his turn to pull a couple tricks out of his sleeve. Perhaps Sherlock caught him off guard, a little more experienced and a little filthier than John expected, but Sherlock has yet to learn exactly why the army boys called John “3 Continents” Watson.

John deliberately and pointedly pins Sherlock to the bed by one broad hand, pressed into the tender skin just under his ribcage, at the top of his stomach. Sherlock sucks a breath in sharply in reply. 

A breath he coughs out, stuttered and inelegant, when John darts in and licks a long path through his own cum up the long column of Sherlock’s throat. 

“John!” Sherlock shouts, voice all delighted shock, trailing off into sweet, incoherent sounds. John wonders if Sherlock has ever been this speechless his entire life. 

John doesn't try to muffle his moans in reply that creep up his throat as he sets about cleaning Sherlock’s skin with his mouth. 

He pulls back to watch Sherlock, looking a little more desperate and hungry than John ever expected he could look. He’s arched sharply in John’s arms, one hand tight in John’s hair and one in the sheets above his head, head thrown back and skin flushed. 

“You’re a little quiet,” John asks, suddenly a bit anxious, “I expected more deducing, facts, something. Everything okay?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes so hard he’s lucky they don’t pop out and roll across the floor. 

“Astonishingly,” Sherlock adds, sounding completely normal, as if he can slide from regular thoughts to sweaty and cum-covered in John’s arms and back without a thought, “I find myself enjoying this without the need for further deductions or information. Other than my running list of your surprisingly extensive kinks. Both as much a novelty to me as they are to you, I assure you.”

“There you are,” John kisses him sweetly, “just checking. We’ll have to compare lists some time. Is it vain of me to say I like the taste of myself on your skin?”

“Of course it is,” Sherlock says, sounding a little breathless, “don’t stop.”

But John is only half listening, focused on licking the taste of himself from Sherlock’s mouth, tongue and lips rasping over Sherlock’s barely-there stubble to chase anything he’s missed. Sherlock is boneless, his head lolling and a wicked, pleased smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as he stretches in John’s arms. 

“John,” Sherlock says, a little pleading, a little ordering. “John, I need-”

His voice cuts out when John presses his mouth, hot and open, to the thin, tender skin of Sherlock’s top rib and then bites down one by one until he reaches Sherlock’s stomach. He mouths there, relishing in the heave of Sherlock’s breath under his mouth, dipping his tongue into Sherlock's navel and earning a delightfully surprised shout, before he moves on. He settles himself in the vee of Sherlock’s legs, bracketed by the pale stretch of Sherlock’s thighs, and runs his hands over every part of Sherlock’s skin he can reach except exactly where Sherlock wants his hands. 

Sherlock bucks impatiently under him, throwing his head back with a frustrated yell. 

“John, please!” 

He bites at the pale expanse of Sherlock’s inner thigh, teasing a bruise to the surface, and barely hanging on to Sherlock writhing in his arms. 

He finally lets them both give in, sinking his mouth down over Sherlock's cock and testing the edges of his old skills as Sherlock swears in more languages than he can follow.

A flash of lightning too far to bring thunder but close enough to light the room makes them both jump, momentarily freeze framing every filthy, sordid detail of the moment. For a hearbeat, Sherlock is lit in a blue tinge, cool and perfect and cut from the finest marble, before the heat of him steals back into John’s skin like a brand at every point they touch. 

Sherlock is trembling in his hands and it doesn’t take long to send him over the edge. Johhn shows off just a little, pressing and pressing until Sherlock is fucking his throat in short, sharp little thrusts as he cums.

It’s a lot, leaving John feeling a little sore throated and satisfied as he pulls back with a slick pop, the ends trailing over his lips and down his chin. He closes his eyes and breaths hard for a second, trying to catch up with his own racing heart. John feels fingers trace the line of his jaw, drag through the mess of his mouth, and he darts his tongue out to catch. When he opens his eyes, Sherlock is staring down at him with utter delight, reaching to press his thumb to John’s bottom lip and biting at his own in mirror. 

A soft patter of rain starts up outside and quickly speeds until it is the constant hum of a downpour. Lighting flashes again, each time closer and brighter, thunder rumbling on the horizon now. The room goes dark, without sun or streetlamp, and Sherlock reaches one long arm to flip on the lamp, flooding the room with warm gold light. 

John can’t help the stupid, goofy grin creeping back into his face so he ducks his head to presses kisses up the inside of Sherlock’s thigh, licking at the bruise he left as he passes, and rests his face on Sherlock’s stomach, sighing contentedly. He almost jumps when Sherlock starts gently petting his hair but quickly loses himself to the sensation, fingers idly tracing a pattern of moles on Sherlock’s hip. 

Sherlock shifts under him, stretching and turning until he’s on his stomach, arms under his head where his face is pressed into the pillow. John returns to his spot against Sherlock’s hip, wandering fingers mapping the constellations of Sherlock’s back. 

“I’ve decided,” John suddenly says, almost too loud for the quiet of the room and Sherlock’s skin twitches under his touch.

Sherlock grumbles into his pillow and turns his face to John, hair foaming wildly into his eyes. “Please, do enlighten us with whatever you’ve just realized.”

John pulls himself up so he’s laying on the pillow next to Sherlock, sneaking a hand up over his waist and pulling him in closer. 

“You are not allowed to walk naked about the flat.”

“I wouldn’t do it when Mrs. Hudson is around. Trust me John, I’m even more horrified by the prospect of that conversation than you are.”

“No, it’s just that I would actually have to fuck you on every stable available surface in the flat and I’m not convinced Mycroft doesn’t have cameras in the books or something.”

Sherlock is very quiet for a moment and then he lifts his head properly, staring with a look John can’t read. 

“What?”

Sherlock watches him without answer, his mind processing whatever details it picks up, and then he shrugs, sinking back into the pillows with a wiggle and stretch John will never _ever_ tell him is fucking adorable. 

Sherlock mutters something that John can’t understand and he leans close, pressing his mouth to the skin of Sherlock’s shoulder blade in tease as he speaks. 

“What was that? I don’t speak smothered with a pillow.”

Sherlock turns his head just enough to watch John mouth along the round of his shoulder, looking peaceful.

“I said, I clear the cameras twice a week.”

This time Sherlock’s deep laugh and his own are caught between their mouths. 

*******

Frankly, it doesn’t surprise John in the slightest to find Sherlock in Buckingham Palace wrapped in a sheet. In fact, it’s so on brand for Sherlock, he almost feels relieved at the sight. If Sherlock, who undoubtedly knew where he was going, refuses to put on clothes for Queen and Country, then whatever this is is just another case and Sherlock is still resolutely Sherlock. 

No matter what darkness may forge on in the world, no matter what mysteries the wealthy or powerful may bring him, no matter what Moriarty may be up to in the shadows -- Sherlock Holmes is a constant the universe can’t touch.

They laugh in the cab over a stolen ashtray as John tangles his fingers with Sherlock’s on the seat. 

**Author's Note:**

> I also make fandom playlists!  
> [ **Vatican Cameos**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4xescjBZLkzApBjNGmUUqr?si=4GiptxDHTMqUtNemw79o9A) \- _A BBC Sherlock Playlist (listen on shuffle) - The click of handcuffs, wet pavement, split lips, bruised knuckles, out of breath, paper catching fire, text alert, gun oil, laughter in a dark alley._  
> [ **Peppermint_Witch on Spotify** ](https://open.spotify.com/user/peppermint_witch?si=7YGQK9N8RlyKfaHFkiilDg)


End file.
